The despatches were soon prepared; and the council, willing to assume all the pomp of established authority, ordered me to be conducted to the port, as one of its members, with all sort of ceremony. Garcias remained at the palace, to take measures against any movement on the part of Moreno's partizans; but the corregidor accompanied me to the water side: and having formally resigned the seat, to which I had been called in the council, I embarked on board the brigantine, and took leave, for ever of Barcelona.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The most humiliating of all the various kinds of human suffering is undoubtedly sea-sickness, and therefore I will willingly pass over all my sensations in crossing the Gulf of Lyons. I believe, however, that the excessive importunity of my corporeal feelings did me good, inasmuch as it served, for a time, to obliterate from my memory the various strange and exciting scenes which I had lately gone through. If we could suppose the soul itself to be in a state of ebriety, I should say that my mind had been for several days drunk with excess of stimulus; and the relaxation consequent upon it, during the vacant hours of the voyage, would have been actually painful, had not the horrors of sea-sickness so employed the body, that the mind could not act.
We landed, then, at Marseilles, after a safe and rapid passage, and I prepared to set out with all speed for Lyons, hoping, by being the first to bear the Cardinal de Richelieu news, which I well divined would be most joyful to him, that I might at all events remove some of the dangers and difficulties of my situation--a situation which I hardly dared to contemplate.
My father, though richly endowed with personal courage, wanted, as I have said, that moral courage, which leads a man to look everything that is painful or disagreeable boldly in the face. With him, indeed, this disposition was carried to the excess of flying from the contemplation, even of inconvenient trifles; but enough of it had descended to me to make me willingly turn my eyes from circumstances like those in which I was now placed.
Money, I had hardly more than would bear me to Paris; resources, I had none before me, and I shrank from the idea of either writing to, or hearing from, the once loved home that I had left, with a degree of horror it is difficult to describe. What could I write, without forcing my mind to dwell upon details that were agony to think of? What could I hear, but reproaches, which I knew not well whether I deserved or not; or tenderness, which would have been more painful still? My only resource was, like the ostrich in the fable, to shut my eyes against the evils that pursued me, and to hurry forward as fast as I could, filling up the vacuity of each moment with any circumstances less painful than my own thoughts, and leaving to time and chance--the two great patrons of the unfortunate--to remove my difficulties, and provide for my wants.
At the inn at Marseilles, as soon as my little attendant, Achilles, had recovered what he called his powers of ambulation, the rolling of the sea having left him, even on land, certain sensations of unsteadiness which made him walk in various zigzag meanders during the whole day, he unfolded to my astonished eyes the clothes which he had bought for me at Barcelona. First, appeared a splendid Spanish riding dress of philomot cloth, laced with silver, and perfectly new; with a black beaver and white plumes, which, together with the untanned riding-boots, sword, and dagger, all handsomely mounted, might cost, upon a very moderate calculation, at least one hundred and fifty louis-d'ors. I concluded myself ruined, of course; but what was my surprise and horror when he dragged forth a long leathern case, containing a rich dress suit of white silk, laced with gold; a white sword and gold hilt, a bonnet and plume, that might have served a prince, with collars of Flemish lace, gold-embroidered gloves of Brussels, and shoes of Cordova.
If it had been a box of serpents I could not have gazed into it with more horror, my purse feeling lighter by a pistole for every fold he unplied in the rich white silk. "There! there! there!" cried he, contemplating them with as much delight as I experienced consternation. "What an exquisite Alexander the Great I should make in that white silk! Never was such an opportunity lost, for fitting up the wardrobe of a theatre--never! never! but I could not bear to part with the little shining yellow things, that kept my pocket so warm, and therefore I only bought what was necessary for you, signeurie."
"And where do you think that my seigneurie is to get money to pay for them?" demanded I, somewhat sharply. "Pray how much have you spent more than I gave you?"
The poor little man looked up with an air of consternation that increased my own. "Spent!" cried he; "spent more than you gave me!--Why, none at all. I got them all for seven louis."